Saturday, January 20, 2018

I figured out what my ideal form of humor is, and it's computers writing nonsense:a computer-generated list of new My Little Pony names via artificial neural networkWe start at Sprinkle Cherry Bolt and rapidly descend to Deader Pony, Dunder Dort, and Tracklewock Packin. It's GREAT.a Harry Potter chapter written with predictive textI tried to pick a few lines to excerpt, but it's just all too good. You have to read it in full.I made some food I liked recently:These salted butter chocolate chunk shortbread cookies are really weird, but they're also delicious. Very similar to these chocolate sable cookies (and similar potential pitfall with crumbliness-don't despair, just use a sharp knife when cutting and smoosh it back together).I also made this chocolate babka wreath over Christmas break, and it turned out just as beautiful as the website pictures for once (and so delicious people ate it stale the next day).Here are some science-y things I recommend reading:Most of my scientific expertise is knowing how to make and work with proteins. This was a cool article that explains why proteins are cool and how scientists are designing new ones not found in nature.I also really liked this article, on keeping a cosmic perspective + the Voyager golden record:"I don’t think it is possible to contribute to the present moment in any meaningful way while being wholly engulfed by it. It is only by stepping out of it, by taking a telescopic perspective, that we can then dip back in and do the work which our time asks of us."Not really science-y but I've been thinking about this, too: preserving white space in your daily routine (found via CoJ). Almost all of my dead time is full of looking at my phone (waiting for/riding in the elevator, waiting for an experiment to finish up, standing in line at the store, eating lunch, etc.), and I don't think that's a good thing.I'll add that to my list of things to work on in 2018, joining learn basic Italian phrases (we're going to Europe this summer!!!!) and bake more cakes. Only appropriate, given that zucchero is inexplicably one of the first words Duolingo taught me.

Wednesday, January 3, 2018

I read more books this year. I somewhat arbitrarily decided that this should be the year I read more sci-fi, so I read as many Isaac Asimov books as I could get my hands on until I realized that I hated the Foundation series. I love Robots, hate Foundation. I don't know what that says about me, but there you go. Here's what else I read:

Non-fiction
Mormon Feminism edited by Joanna Brooks, Rachel Hunt Steenblik, and Hannah Wheelwright
The God Who Weeps by Terryl and Fiona Givens
I Contain Multitudes by Ed Yong
An Astronaut's Guide to Life on Earth by Chris Hadfield
Quiet by Susan Cain

Books I Felt Bad About Not Liking That Much
Wolf Hall by Hillary Mantel
Persuasion by Jane Austen
The Orphan Keeper by Camron Wright
To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf

I Went through an Asimov Phase
The Complete Robot by Isaac Asimov
The Caves of Steel by Isaac Asimov
The Naked Sun by Isaac Asimov
The Robots of Dawn by Isaac Asimov
Robots and Empire by Isaac Asimov
Prelude to Foundation by Isaac Asimov
Forward the Foundation by Isaac Asimov
Foundation by Isaac Asimov

Yay Sci-fi Short Stories!
Stories of Your Life and Others by Ted Chiang
The Paper Menagerie by Ken Liu

Odds and Ends
The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
Chemistry by Weike Wang
The Bear and the Nightingale by Katherine Arden (this was really lovely–you should read it)
West with the Night by Beryl Markham
H is for Hawk by Helen Macdonald

Favorite Books (Series) of 2017
The Three-Body Problem by Liu Cixin
The Dark Forest by Liu Cixin
Death's End by Liu Cixin

I loved The Three-Body Problem et al. It's a Chinese sci-fi series that is beautiful, and haunting, and so, so creative. By far the most interesting thing I read all year (and I read Stories of Your Life and Others, so that's saying something!). Highly recommended.

My goal for 2018 is to read 37 books, raising the bar by one book. Any book suggestions to help me get there? What was the best thing you read in 2017?

Tuesday, January 2, 2018

This photo quality is terrible, but I love it because our regional church women's leadership is in it with us (Stake YW Pres and Relief Society Pres), and you can see the temple spire in the background.

Also ate a lot of good donuts and ice cream, visited a magical bookstore (hi, The Last Bookstore), and got to see the Broad. Met up with old BYU chemistry friend Naomi and my cousin Nick.

May: PhD Graduation

Aaron's mom came out to celebrate with us, and we found a new favorite restaurant (Talula's Garden).

June: Roadtrip to North Carolina
Scoped things out to see if we wanted to move there (we did! we are!)

July: Trip to San Francisco and Sea Ranch

Sea Ranch is so beautiful it's unreal. Also, there are SEALS!

July: Saw Hamilton with my aunt Jenny

(10/10, would recommend)

October: Seminar at BYU & weekend in Seattle

I got to give my first ever "real" research seminar while at BYU, and we got to meet up with my beloved Bowen roomies Kristen and Amanda in Seattle.

November: Surprised Aaron's family by showing up in Utah for Thanksgiving

(not our dog)

November: Stayed with my cousin Sasha for a materials science conference in Boston

Also got to meet up with former labmate and dear friend Yanfei for ramen.

December: Christmas in Utah with my family

MOA, Brick Oven, donut-making, Quiplash-playing ensued.

In spite of the terrible state of American politics, it turns out my personal 2017 was actually fantastic. I got to do/see/accomplish a lot of things I've wanted to do for a long time, and I got to spend my time with many of my favorite people.

Tuesday, December 12, 2017

I'm pretty sure this terrible phone picture was taken on Aaron's very first day of residency. Look at that cute physician tag on his ID and his sweet, optimistic face! It's been a long 2.5 years since, full of demoralizing weeks and terrible hours (my thoughts on medical training: it's legal hazing), and we can't wait for it to be over. And now we know where we'll be going when it finally ends:

NORTH CAROLINA!

He's going to be a Duke Blue Devil!

We are psyched at the prospect of affordable housing, lots of job opportunities for yours truly, and the possibility of having a dog. See you in June, NC!

I have made this farro dish twice now, and it is SO good. It has so few ingredients that I was skeptical it was going to taste good, but it's really fantastic. The best part is, it's all cooked in one pan and is mostly hands-off. Worth buying farro for! (though I'm sure you could get this to work with another grain if you adjusted the water/cooking time)

Marbled banana bread is my new favorite banana bread. Apologies to my old favorite recipe from Cook's Illustrated, but you're just too much of a pain to make in comparison, and you're not half chocolate.

“God bless the great question askers, the great seekers for righteousness, the great wanters of good things. I, your grandfather, don’t wish you some easy success. But I do wish for you to have wants that make you dress before dawn, or cross burning deserts, or wrestle with God until you get that good blessing. What an interesting life there is ahead for the wanters, not only here and now but a thousand worlds from here!"

Wednesday, July 5, 2017

I've been a postdoc for two months now. A postdoc is someone who keeps doing research as a weird in between trainee and independent scientist for very little money considering the number of years you've spent in school. I work on a collaboration between three professors in bioengineering, chemical engineering, and radiology. I moved over two buildings from the chemistry building so my life has actually changed very little compared to being a grad student, other than the nagging despair of I'm never going to graduate is gone. Yay graduation! Graduation for everyone!

So far, here are the best perks of the job:

1) I can check out library books for a full year. I currently have four books checked out that I don't have to return until 2018, which sounds a lot farther away than next year somehow. Granted, I had several books checked out for almost 5 years while a grad student because apparently there's no limit on the number of times you can renew them, but still. Now I don't have to renew as often!

2) My university ID card says faculty! This is completely inaccurate but still cool to see.

3) Health insurance + vision insurance + dental insurance! I got health insurance as a grad student (which was wonderful! go to grad school in the sciences, they'll pay you a stipend and give you insurance, all you have to do is work 60+ h/week) but no dental or vision. Now I can go to the dentist FOR FREE. Amazing.

4) I get to learn about a bunch of new fields, including fluid mechanics, microfluidic fabrication, ultrasound physics, photoacoustic physics (this is about light turning into sound, craaazy), mechanical properties of materials, and expression/purification of a new protein (oleosin! it comes from sunflowers). After 6 years of thinking about ferritin non-stop, it feels great to switch gears.

So, for now, I'll embrace this in between time and continue to enjoy the benefits of interlibrary loans. Maybe I'll even figure out what to do next.

Wednesday, June 14, 2017

It sort of looks like my coffee table is a meteor that dropped out of the sky and smashed into my living room floor, but I like it. I suppose it fits with the John Glenn portrait and rocket photograph on the wall. It's also way better sized for the room than the last rug was, and that in and of itself has been a major upgrade.

(sorry, crappy phone pic)

It is by far the craziest thing in my house, and it makes me happy every time I walk into the room. Can't ask for much more than that, now can you?

Welcome!

You are probably my friend or my mother, so here it is: a blog to keep you informed about mine and Aaron's adventures as poor grad and med school students as we attempt to take over the world with science and awesomeness.

"She was illusive. She was today. She was tomorrow. She was the faintest scent of a cactus flower, the flitting shadow of an elf owl. We did not know what to make of her. In our minds we tried to pin her to a corkboard like a butterfly, but the pin merely went through and away she flew."-Stargirl by Jerry Spinelli